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Comment by the_other | Hacker News Reader

My eyesight isn’t great, so legibility is very important to me. However, screen real-estate is also important (more-so because I zoom my screen most of the time). FF seemed to be much wider. In this case, I’ll take SF Pro over FF in order to save some space.

Another factor comes to mind: UIs are places you spend a fair amount of time, and repetitively. Whilst there are “new” UI elements in an OS from time to time, you in fact see the same ones over and over, much more often. Users of OSs also tend to have time on their side when interacting with the UI, when compared with drivers reading road signs. My take is that you don’t need to optimise for legibility as strongly when designing for an OS UI as you do when designing for road signs.

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Try `Atkinson Hyperlegible` https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont

It was developed by the Braille Institute of America in 2019 for visually impaired. I think it's good font overall.

For monospace you need something else. Aribus designed a great font called B612 mono except that O0 are too easy to mix.

I wish B612 mono fixed their (). Not sure what the reasoning was behind making them look like []

I really don’t understand in which context you want to save space. We are not talking about printed book pages after all but screens. You can always scroll. As for the tracking of FF Unit: That’s by design. The letters themselves are actually a bit compressed compared with similar typefaces but the tracking is a bit wider. That makes it more legible as the individual letters are in less danger to “fuse” together.

> I really don’t understand in which context you want to save space. We are not talking about printed book pages after all but screens. You can always scroll.

When you zoom in, you lose context of the surrounding data and controls. So I want to save negative space, and hope to have controls or links closer to the content they operate on. You can't always scroll, especially with an OS where the elements are in fixed places (until you move the window, which you have to find by pan+scan).

I accept I'm an edge case.

> [...] screen real-estate is also important [...]

This is why I've been spending a lot of time (ab)using Emacs's browser, eww, in conjunction with follow mode: The two together allow me to view most things in an efficient columnar display, letting me take better advantage of the width of my screen. (It's hard to rotate a laptop's monitor.)

Your point is very valid. It made me wonder, maybe UI font should be made without personality and without elements that grab attention? The UI elements are less important than the content that is displayed. Therefore UI should not distract user and grab more attention comparing to the content. Even if that attention is unconscious.

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